A $47M Harriman fix

State to announce project to centralize services in Building 5 on state campus

Jordan Carle, Times Union

By Jordan Carleo-Evangelist

Published 11:21 pm, Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Building 5 at the state Harriman Campus Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. The building is being rehabilitated to house the back-office functions of many state agencies (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Building 5 at the state Harriman Campus Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013,...

Building 5 at the state Harriman Campus Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. The building is being rehabilitated to house the back-office functions of many state agencies (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

Building 5 at the state Harriman Campus Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013,...

Building 5 at the state Harriman Campus Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. The building is being rehabilitated to house the back-office functions of many state agencies (Lori Van Buren / Times Union)

The Office of General Services, which manages state property, is expected to announce the project Thursday, signaling that the Cuomo administration will pass on an earlier proposal to lease 325,000 square feet of private office space to accommodate its newly created business services center.

The rehab will add 1,400 workers to the roughly 5,000 already on the 330-acre campus between the University at Albany and Route 85, which local officials have for years coveted for private, taxpaying development seen as crucial to the city's future fiscal health.

The announcement will surely thrust the campus back into the spotlight some 30 months after the state panel charged with facilitating the redevelopment, the Harriman Research and Technology Corp., was quietly dissolved. Vacant since DOT left for Wolf Road in Colonie in 2004, the renovated 237,000-square-foot building would house the services center created to consolidate human resources, financial and other back-office functions used by many state agencies.

In March, OGS put out feelers that it was looking for as much as 325,000 square feet to accommodate the outfit.

The lowest bid received, however, was $87 million — though the price would have been lower for a building the size of Building 5, which is roughly 30 percent smaller, the official said.

News that the state was looking for more space broke as the Cuomo administration wound down its "re-stacking" of workers, aimed at saving money by moving workers out of leased offices and into empty state-owned space on the campus and downtown.

Asbestos abatement is scheduled to begin this fall with construction expected to take about 18 months, the official said.

The campus — accessed by its massive ring roads tied to Interstate 90 and Route 85 — has long been viewed as central the city's economic vitality, representing the largest plot left in the city for private development. Making that happen, however, has proved difficult over the last decade.

Under Gov. George Pataki, the Harriman Research and Technology Development Corp., a subsidiary of state's economic development arm, Empire State Development, was commissioned to steer the private development of the campus. Over the years, plans ranged from a high-tech hub to a mix of shops and new housing.

But HRTC was dissolved with little fanfare in January 2011 after never coming to terms with Columbia Development to build new office space on 6.5 acres in the campus' northeast corner — a fact not widely known even among those who have followed the redevelopment closely.

The state official briefed on the plans for Building 5 said its renovation would not affect broader redevelopment plans for the campus because the utilities for the new food laboratory run through it, meaning it was not a candidate for demolition. Given the campus' proximity to UAlbany, some have speculated it could be the site of one of Cuomo's proposed new tax-free economic development zones.

Meanwhile, Mayor Jerry Jennings and city's Assembly delegation continue to press the state to pay the city $12 million annually in lieu of taxes on the campus land to compensate for revenue lost by redevelopment delays — payments that would decrease as the acreage is privatized.